As a dentist, you probably have some basic criteria in mind as to what you’re looking for in a dental laboratory. Fast turn around times, reasonable prices, and reliable quality might be at the top of your list. From what most dental labs choose to highlight on their websites, these are the benchmarks that suppliers deem most important to you as well, and ones that can possibly be met from anywhere in the world – hence the rise of dental lab outsourcing in recent years.
Arguments to and for the outsourcing of dental lab work have been made and discussed in various articles, blogs and dental publications. It’s been put forward that outsourcing dental lab work overseas may be detrimental to our local industry, and that we can’t really be sure about the quality of work or material we get when placing orders for crowns and bridges from halfway around the world. Then the flip side of the issue comes up: with all the economic difficulties in the UK today, and prices of local goods and labour ever rising, how do we expect dental practices to keep their heads above the water without turning to suitable money-saving methods such as delegating some of the work they need done to cheaper suppliers?
All these arguments raise a valid point, but in the noise from both sides of this debate, a more vital issue is lost – no matter where you choose to have your lab work done, isn’t the kind of relationship you have with your lab ever as important?
Some dentists seem to have forgotten that in order for effective dentistry to be performed, dental labs should be full practice partners to those requiring their services, and not just mere vendors selling a product needed to complete a treatment. Considering that coming up with excellent dental restoration work is the shared responsibility of both technicians and dentists, shouldn’t you seek a more personal working relationship with your dental lab of choice?
As easy as it may sound for simple restoration work to be sent off and made without the need for anything other than a lab ticket, there are of course more complicated cases that can benefit from another critical eye, and restorations that can’t really be crafted to the best standards without an actual discussion. And on the off-chance that you mistakenly omit a seemingly negligible but vital piece of information from the lab ticket, the lab you outsourced to based in a different country might not be able to get in touch with you to double check the facts handed to them.
Of course, there may be some dental labs outside the UK who do offer an effective, personal service. But more often than not, if you choose to outsource your dental lab requirements overseas, communication is unfortunately limited to lab tickets and emails. This lack of deeper communication might lead to small mistakes and even big mishaps in the end.
In an ideal world, what every dentist should be getting from their dental lab is this: a technical manager whom you can bounce ideas back and forth with and cares about the end result of your treatment; a technician who is on exactly the same page as you when it comes to ideal treatment outcome; and the feeling that you’re not performing the restoration on your own, that the lab you choose to work with views your patient as someone they are partly responsible for. In an ideal world, you should be able to call your dental lab with regards to a order you’ve placed, and have a helpful discussion with an experienced professional who can give you some input on the work you’re planning to do. But this of course is the ideal, and something that might not be entirely possible when you take factors such as economics into consideration.
For those who do deem the monetary advantage of outsourcing to be more important than the dentist-lab relationship fleshed out above, it may be enough for you to send an order off and get the restorations back at a cheaper price. But you also end up losing out when you receive a less than perfect crown or bridge from a supplier whose communication with you may have been somewhat sparse. You may have saved money on the product, but if you had to spend an extra half hour trying to make that crown fit properly into your patient’s mouth then you would have lost a considerable amount on additional chair time anyway.
And the loss can be even greater when a restoration won’t fit at all and needs to be sent back. Then you not only lose the chair time, you lose your patient’s trust as well, because as far as the patient is concerned you, the dentist, made the mistake – they don’t know that the lab you chose to work with is responsible for the unwanted outcome.
With the work dental labs provide being such a huge part of treatment outcome, it really pays to have a lab you can work with, not just send work to. Though your initial impression may be that finding such a lab with expertise and quality assurance in the UK will cost your practice way too much monetarily, you should be aware that there are options available out there today. There are dental labs in the UK that provide expertise, personal service and unparalleled quality for economical prices. Sparkle Dental Labs can be one such example, as they invite visitors to their website to call and discuss their latest cases in an effort to supply their customers with solutions for their treatment plans.
Finding a lab you’re happy to work with is a delicate balance of economics and gain. Dental laboratories are responsible for far too much of the treatment to be regarded as mere vendors to your practice, but at the same time you need to find a lab whose prices you can realistically afford over a longer period of time.
Thankfully, there are options out there that can give you the kind of service you ought to receive at better prices, making the possibility of an actual working partnership with your dental lab possible once more.
For any additional information please call 0800 138 6255 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit: